[Irieguy]

The reason why you have to raise preflop is because of MP1's chip stack.

By limping, you allow a situation to develop where he has 500+ chips and the pot is 250. That makes you both pot committed for the rest of his chips with just about any flop. (The same also goes for the BB, further complicating things.) But 3 other players are acting before him. They are likely to check when they hit well and either lead or put him all in when they catch a bit of it. This is not a good spot for you.

The key with this hand is to recognize this situation preflop and understand that since a limp pot-commits you against the short stack, you'd be much better off seeing 5 cards against only him.

So, you can make a standard raise and fold if the UTG limper comes back over the top of you if you are one of those people that thinks UTG limpers always have aces... or you can just put him all-in preflop.

I would probably make it 625 to go because it would be really hard to make a raise large enough to get rid of the big stacks that wouldn't commit you to the pot with your stack. So you may as well just let everybody know what's up: you want to race the short stack with a hand that is good enough to go all-in with.

Irieguy